Category Archives: Berkeley College Republicans

Patrick Little (holding flag) with members of Identity Evropa at a rally for Kate Steinle in San Francisco, December 2017

Much has been said about the several far-Right candidates running for political office across the United States in 2018. Given the increased level of white power activity occurring in Northern California in recent years, it’s not surprising that one of these candidates calls the Bay Area home.

Patrick Little is a neo-Nazi and member of the League of the South as well as a former marine. He currently lives in Albany (nestled right next to Berkeley) and is trying to replace Dianne Feinstein as a senator representing California. After interviewing Little, one journalist concluded that:

“[W]hat sets him apart is that on April 24, a SurveyUSA poll had him placing second in the Senate race, gathering more than twice as much support as any other Republican. If that turns out to be a correct predictor and he places second among the nearly three dozen candidates competing in the June 5 primary, he would face Feinstein in November’s general election.”

The fact that Little is polling in second place ahead of the June 5th primary is the result of the last few years of Alt-Right agitation as well as the way the media, liberals, and Republicans have all responded to the Alt-Right. These groups all in their own ways have participated in pulling fascist politics closer to the mainstream.

The Alt-Right

While Little claims to have been “pro-white” his whole life, he also credits Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as a process that ultimately led to his “awakening.” Through his involvement in Trump-supporting internet networks, Little came across Kevin MacDonald’s book The Culture of Critique. MacDonald is a white supremacist and former professor who the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “the neo-Nazi movement’s favorite academic.” His book dresses anti-Semitism in academic language, but to say MacDonald’s intellectual and scholarly integrity are questionable would be an understatement. Nonetheless, Little praises MacDonald’s book as the final puzzle piece that woke him up and put him on his current neo-Nazi trajectory.

Patrick Little, early 2017

Little clearly felt more emboldened as his radicalization progressed and Trump won the 2016 election. In Northern California, Little made speeches and harassed anti-Trump protesters in San Francisco, which he filmed and uploaded online. Throughout 2017, Little traveled across the country to participate in a number of Alt-Right events. In March, Little brought his anti-Semitism to the AIPAC conference. The next month, Little was present at a League of the South event in Alabama honoring David Duke. Last August in Charlottesville, Little was present at both the torch march at the University of Virginia and the next day’s “Unite the Right” rally which eventually led to the murder of Heather Heyer. Little had volunteered to provide security for the speakers in Charlottesville, at times armed with an assault rifle. Since then, Little has popped up at several events in California looking for attention. One incident at the March for Our Lives rally in San Francisco ended with Little assaulting someone after they grabbed his sign. In interviews to promote his campaign, Little brags about the encounter and expresses pride in being violent with someone he believed to be Jewish.

Patrick Little in Charlottesville, VA on August 12, 2017 with Mike Peinovich aka Mike Enoch on the left and David Duke on the right

Little’s supporters have been busy in recent months trying to help him get elected using familiar methods of organizing via online communities (4chan, social media, YouTube, private chat servers) and taking anonymous action in real life by putting up flyers. However, since Charlottesville, infighting and debates have broken any former sense of unity the far-Right had. Little has struggled to bring his campaign to a few of the bigger Alt-Right platforms such as The Right Stuff and the Daily Stormer. Despite a lack of concerted effort in the Alt-Right to help Little get elected, he still managed to place second in polls ahead of the primary. This is because institutions and networks outside of the Alt-Right, including the Republican Party, have themselves participated in creating the conditions that placed Little second in polls.

Patrick Little posters around San Jose State University

President of the League of the South Michael Hill tweets an endorsement of Patrick Little

The Republican Party

When Patrick Little tried to register for the California Republican Party convention on May 5, he was removed by security and banned by party officials. Republican political consultant Luis Alvarado, referring to Little, said, “That certainly doesn’t represent the values of the Republican Party.” California’s representative on the Republican National Committee, Harmeet Dhillon, claimed the state party’s board of directors would vote on a resolution condemning Little.

However, while Dhillon and other Republican Party officials say they condemn Little and his views, their actions show something different. They have in fact been supporting Little’s views and their dissemination among young conservatives for some time now.

Harmeet Dhillon and the Berkeley College Republicans

For example, after Milo Yiannopoulos, David Horowitz, and Ann Coulter were all unsuccessful at making speeches at UC Berkeley in 2017, Harmeet Dhillon represented the Berkeley College Republicans in a lawsuit against the university claiming they and their invited speakers were being censored. Of course, leaks revealed Milo to be a fascist sympathizer who collaborated with neo-Nazis on his articles about the Alt-Right, used Nazi references as account passwords, and sang “America the Beautiful” while a group (which included Richard Spencer) sang along and did Nazi salutes. The Berkeley College Republicans wanted Milo on campus so badly that they invited him (and failed) twice in 2017. Milo was also caught displaying Kevin MacDonald’s book The Culture of Critique on his desk in some of his YouTube videos. This is the same book previously mentioned that provided Patrick Little a pseudo-intellectual ground to his anti-Semitism.

Milo giving advice on choosing a major with Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique in the bottom left corner

Harmeet Dhillon also chose to represent Troy Worden in his lawsuit against BAMN organizer Yvette Felarca. Troy Worden was once the president of the Berkeley College Republicans until his fellow club members exposed him as having national socialist (Nazi) friends and supporters. This revelation came as no surprise, as Worden had been writing about and making alliances with fascist organizers in prior months, including Nathan Damigo, the founder of white nationalist organization Identity Evropa, and Martin Sellner, the head of Generation Identity, a fascist group based in Europe that served as Damigo’s inspiration. It’s also not a shock that Worden was the one who originally invited Milo to speak at the Berkeley campus.

BCR president Troy Worden (left) with Martin Sellner, the leader of fascist European organization Generation Identity

While Worden was replaced as the president of the Berkeley College Republicans, he continued filling a state leadership position for the California College Republicans. Worden was part of the “Rebuild CCR” slate headed by Milo ally Ariana Rowlands. Before Rowlands and the Rebuild slate won, she and Milo were advocating for a legal defense team that would help College Republicans invite any hateful speakers they wanted to their campuses. Taking stock of CCR networks, Rowlands noted, “Our current resources have been organizations like FIRE, Harmeet Dhillon Law Firm, Shawn Steel Law Firm, and Freedom X.” After taking control of the California College Republicans, she stated, “We are the voice of the conservative movement on college campuses, we will continue to do so, and we will be louder and prouder than ever before.”

Troy Worden’s Instagram post about Rebuild CCR

This is all to say that while some Republicans may denounce neo-Nazis rhetorically, their material actions elsewhere have opened up space for neo-Nazis to gain a platform and organize around their violent white nationalist aims. This has been the only achievement of the right wing’s recent battles over “free speech.” Harmeet Dhillon may claim that Patrick Little is not welcome at the California Republican convention, but she has materially supported people spreading the same views, albeit with more marketable packaging.

Liberals

Liberals and the Democratic Party have also played a role in carving out space for Patrick Little’s neo-Nazi campaign. In August 2017, Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguín told local news that he thinks law enforcement should classify antifa as a gang, adding that “They come dressed in uniforms, they have weapons, they’re almost a militia.” Ironically, it was the city of Berkeley and its police department that directly coordinated with the Oath Keeper militia and other far-Right organizers ahead of the fascist rally planned for April 15 in downtown Berkeley earlier that year. Indeed, on April 15 the Berkeley police protected white supremacists (including a cohort of Hammerskin gang affiliates) as they committed violence against the local community.

Patrick Little supporter Alex Carpenter does Nazi salutes at home and participated in far-Right violence on both March 4 and April 15, 2017 in Berkeley

Some of these same people would go on to commit similar violent acts in Charlottesville having gotten practice in Berkeley. Arreguín, Berkeley’s first Latino mayor, has himself received so many death threats from the Alt-Right that he temporarily had a personal security detail from BPD. Still, the only response from the city of Berkeley has been to pass laws giving the city manager and police more authority and tools to further repress anti-fascist protesters.

UCPD officer smiling for photo with Kyle Chapman

The media framed these events with a similar narrative. Anti-fascists were portrayed as overaggressive and unempathetic while neo-Nazis were described as brave and misunderstood warriors fighting for freedom of speech. As the community confronted the far-right in Berkeley on April 15, Berkeleyside published a series of tweets with the phrase “meanwhile in real Berkeley” as if the sieg heiling and violence occurring downtown wasn’t actually happening. When they wrote about the Berkeley College Republicans, they failed to mention their members’ relationship with violent white supremacist Nathan Damigo and other links to violent far-Right figures.

Berkeleyside’s solution to fascism: look the other way

Those in the center have repeatedly failed to confront far-Right terror. Instead, they’ve only managed to invest more resources and police into protecting white power rallies and going after autonomous anti-fascist activists. This has downplayed the dangers of fascism and the Alt-Right in the mainstream and been used to further justify state surveillance and repression of anarchists.

UC Berkeley

Members of the Berkeley College Republicans often push the narrative that UC Berkeley censors conservatives, but the truth is very different. The university never denied the club’s right to invite speakers. In fact, UC Berkeley spent millions of dollars on event security for BCR in 2017 and even paid for some of the costs associated with BCR’s events. Campus officials asked the community to ignore fascist threats and then got in the way of those that chose to protest. Chancellor Carol Christ declared the 2017-2018 school year the “free speech year” in an attempt to get the overwhelming majority of the campus that is anti-racist to accept the transformation of the university into a hub for far-right organizing. Since BCR’s Milo event was shut down in February 2017, UC Berkeley has bent over backwards to protect the far-Right on campus.

University of California President Janet Napolitano launched the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement in 2017 intended to “better educate students about the extent of the 1st Amendment.” The goal is to drill liberal principles of free speech into students with the hope that they will stop no-platforming speakers and mobilizing against fascist agitation on campus. This comes even as the Alt-Right has been open and honest about being against free speech and only using the issue to forcefully insert their ideas into mainstream political discourse, something anti-fascists have been pointing out for years now. The decision to develop a project around free speech rather than one aimed at combatting the growth of fascist politics among the student body is an odd one. In 2009 when she was Secretary of Homeland Security, Napolitano pulled a report from the DHS website about right wing extremists after getting negative reactions from conservative pundits, which seems to be contrary to her current free speech agenda.

Patrick Little attending a Berkeley College Republicans event on February 15, 2018 in room 2040 VLSB

Neo-Nazi Patrick Little thinks there is an anti-white conspiracy at UC Berkeley

An article published by Bohemian on May 4 revealed that Patrick Little listed a UC Berkeley student housing apartment as his address in state filings. Bohemian spoke to UC Berkeley and asked about the listed address:

“If he doesn’t live there, then who does? And what’s his connection to Berkeley? ‘We didn’t find any name matching that name either now or in the past,’ says university spokeswoman Janet Gilmore, who added, ‘I can’t talk about who may or may not live there because of state privacy laws.'”

The address is 735 W End Way #104, Albany, CA 94706. Little lives at this address with his wife Lisa Dege, who is listed in UC Berkeley’s directory with the UID 1521901.

The Republicans and the Democrats have both come together over the issue of free speech and their efforts have had the effect of bolstering far-Right organizing while aiding the repression of antifascists. Concretely, they’ve fought to concede political space to fascists and at the same time focus efforts on imprisoning those who oppose white supremacy. We cannot ignore Patrick Little. At the same time, voting for some ostensibly better politician in his place is not the answer. Looking to the state for a solution only strengthens it. Instead, we must build the capacity for community self-defense and mutual aid against the far-Right.

This article is the first in a two part series examining California organizations that are connected and affiliated with the Republican Party, and have increasingly demonstrated a pattern of promoting and pursuing fascist and neo-Nazi politics under the cover of promoting the GOP.

Introduction

Earlier this year, NoCARA shared some of its research on the Berkeley College Republicans (BCR) weeks before an event in which the student club would host Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley. The event, planned for February 1st, 2017, was successfully cancelled and disrupted by university students along with the local community. Our previous research exposed the Alt-Right leanings of a handful of the club’s members and associates in an attempt to illustrate the fascist creep that was infecting the campus.

This process of the fascist creep, or the increasing integration and legitimization of fascist political positions within mainstream discourse, has continued with the aid of institutions including media outlets, GOP-linked organizations, and even the University of California itself. Resistance to the far-Right’s attempts to advance their vision of inequality persists, and we hope this expanded look at BCR will aid those engaged in antifascist work.

Leader of Berkeley College Republicans is also a big fan of Sellner, and wrote about his brand of white nationalism in Alt-Right paper. pic.twitter.com/bUeoFLbH3v

While BCR members have been profiled in local media such as Berkeleyside and bigger outlets like the New York Times, these articles have largely served as no more than superficial puff pieces that simply frame BCR as innocent victims of overaggressive Leftists or ‘antifa.’ Lacking in these journalists’ work is any serious attempt to understand why BCR has caught the attention of antifascists, as well as what role the club plays in mainstreaming white supremacy in the era of a Trump presidency. This piece will attempt to outline how BCR maintains one foot in the world of traditional mainstream conservatism while keeping the other in the world of far-Right organizing and fascist violence.

“Some of the most red-pilled people you’ll ever meet in your life.” – Kyle Chapman referring to BCR in an interview with InfoWars at Sproul Plaza, 9/27/17

“…[S]ome of the club members who supported Worden told him they were “national socialists,” a term often used by neo-Nazis…” – The Mercury News, 10/28/17

BCR members Anthony Limon, Troy Worden, Claire Chiara, and Jose Diaz. Limon is wearing a Radical Agenda shirt. Radical Agenda is operated by Christopher Cantwell, aka the “Crying Nazi.” Cantwell is the violent white supremacist and anti-Semite known for his participation in the Charlottesville, VA rally on August 11-12 as documented in this VICE News video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P54sP0Nlngg

Throughout 2017, BCR has made various connections to far-Right individuals and groups, including members of the Alt-Right movement responsible for organizing the deadly rally in Charlottesville, VA last August. Most of the club’s associations with these far-Right activists are made through Troy Worden, who has filled the role of President of BCR for most of 2017. Even after his removal from the group by way of an internal coup, Worden still has kept close with other BCR members, and attended a talk by anarchist and antifascist author Mark Bray in Berkeley in November, along with various other BCR members, including Vice President Naweed Tahmas. Clearly, despite Worden being voted out as the President, he still has a leadership role within it as a member, as evidence by the fact that other members of BCR who support him literally self-identified themselves to news media as actual National Socialists, or, neo-Nazis.

The following list details the growing connections between BCR and other formations, organizations, and individuals within the far-Right, the Alt-Right, and Alt-Lite.

Keith Campbell aka kpikklefield

Keith Campbell of El Cerrito, CA is a member of the Oath Keepers, a patriot militia organization who has livestreamed from many right wing events in Northern California throughout 2017. When BCR and others attacked a BAMN meeting at UC Berkeley for instance, Campbell tagged along to document it.

Campbell has encouraged right wing violence and promoted it using his social media pages. Other times, Campbell has used social media to doxx and harass and antifascist and Leftist activists. His desire for violence caught up to him at the August 27th rally in Berkeley where he was confronted by demonstrators.

Campbell is well networked into the local and regional far-Right and Alt-Right scene, following a variety of neo-Nazi, Alt-Right, and white nationalist accounts, despite his attempt to distance himself from white nationalism when he was interviewed by Reveal. Only several months later however, he was back on the streets, supporting Patriot Prayer in Portland, Oregon, on November 4th.

Keith Campbell (center, black baseball hat) with Troy Worden behind him as they and a group of others attack a BAMN meeting at UC Berkeley

Some examples of Keith Campbell’s tweets threatening violence. On the left, he is discussing a young African-American who was attacked at Unite the Right.

Daniel Quillinan

Daniel Quillinan is a fascist living in Berkeley associated with BCR. Quillinan has engaged in violence at rallies in Berkeley and is close to Kyle Chapman. On social media, Quillinan constantly posts racist and violent content, including discussions of weapons. Politically, Quillinan comes from a ‘reactionary Libertarian’ perspective that seeks to make common cause with neo-Nazis and members of the Alt-Right, by way of in his words, attacking ‘anti-racism.’ Quillinan is also a mainstay at BCR meetings and events, as well as street demonstrations. In September, Quillinan was a part of a group that also included BCR members that attacked and disrupted a BAMN meeting on the UC Berkeley campus.

Charles Murray is the author of 1994 book, The Bell Curve, widely known as a pseudoscientific attempt to legitimize racism by arguing that intelligence potential is biologically linked to race. Though Murray’s claims have been debunked, his book remains a staple among the Alt-Right, white supremacists, and growing amounts of ‘average conservatives.’ Troy Worden describes Murray as “one of the most stimulating conservative intellectuals out there.” Murray visited BCR at UC Berkeley in April.

“Tiny [Joey’s second in command] reached out to me and called me up over Facebook and said, ‘You know, I support [IE] and what you do,” Von Ott said.

Von Ott added that Toese told him IE members were “the only people that actually were up front the entire time along with the Street Preachers. The Oath Keepers just sat back—in his words—with their fancy gear and stayed in the back the whole time.”

Gibson traveled to Berkeley with others for the rally on April 15th, where members of BCR were also in attendance. Patriot Prayer has continued organizing events in Berkeley in August, September, and November. BCR members participated in every one of these rallies, and Gibson’s events in September coincided with the so-called “Free Speech Week,” organized by members of BCR.

During that week of actions, BCR members spent considerable time with Joey Gibson. On September 27th, Troy Worden was at Pappy’s in Berkeley having drinks with Joey Gibson and members of Patriot Prayer as well as Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman and members of the Proud Boys. The night before, Troy Worden traveled with the same group to have drinks at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda. For more information on Joey Gibson and his own ties to the fascist movement, see Rose City Antifa’s article here.

The Proud Boys, a Alt-Lite group with links to the Alt-Right and white nationalists, have attended all of BCR’s major 2017 events in Berkeley, starting on February 1st for the Milo Yiannopoulos failed speaking event. BCR members have also in turn been seen with members of the Proud Boys at these events.

The Proud Boys, founded by Gavin McInnes, describe themselves as “Western Chauvinists,” and the group does include token people of color and queer folks, who they frequently point to in order to claim they are not racist while advancing implicit white nationalist politics. At the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, various members of the Proud Boys were present, along with their ‘military’ division, FOAK, or the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, and even the event’s organizer Jason Kessler was a member of the Proud Boys himself.

Back in the bay area, members of the Proud Boys were seen at the Ben Shapiro talk put on by BCR, as well as all of the Alt-Right, far-Right, and Alt-Lite demonstrations which were also attended by BCR members over the past several months. In October, Troy Worden even made an appearance on Gavin McInnes’s show.

Since Chapman’s rise to prominence in far-Right circles, he has attempted to mainstream white nationalist talking points such as ‘white genocide,’ worked openly with Alt-Right figures like Augustus Invictus (a Unite the Right speaker), and helped to promote neo-Nazi groups like Rise Above Movement (RAM). Chapman’s group FOAK was also very prominent in Charlottesville, VA during Unite the Right on August 12th, and his own Facebook page featured a livestream from the event, though Chapman has since deleted the video. Chapman has even gone so far as to call for a return to lynching, called a black Trump support the ‘n-word,’ and told him that he would “have fun slapping those blue gums out your cock holster.”

Kyle Chapman has also worked with BCR and been seen with them on several occasions. Aside from their time together with Joey Gibson already mentioned above, Chapman spoke at a Make Cali Great event with BCR’s Troy Worden, (here Chapman claimed whites were being wiped out and railed against Muslims), and they were seen together at the California GOP convention as well as other events in the Bay Area. As with other Alt-Right and far-RIght figures, the connection between BCR and Chapman show how the campus club has their feet both in fascist street movements and in institutional politics.

Chapman chums it up with Jason Kessler, the man who would go on to organize the neo-Nazi ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville.

Ashton Whitty and Kyle Chapman

Troy Worden and Kyle Chapman

Image from neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA. In the center is Augustus Invictus, who was at the time Chapman’s co-leader of the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights or FOAK. Chapman still remains at the head of the group, and you can see Chapman’s “V” shield logo worn by the Alt-Right protester in the foreground.

Red Elephants

The Red Elephants is a pan-far-Right media group based in Southern California. The organization has known ties to the neo-Nazi group, Rise Above Movement (RAM), which includes members of the Hammerskins neo-Nazi skinhead gang, and has promoted and encouraged violence carried out by this group on several occasions.

To watch live streams of the Red Elephants is to be hit with a barrage of references to neo-Nazi memes and code words, from the “14 words,” to how awesome David Duke is. Unsurprisingly, earlier in 2017, Ashton Whitty of BCR started working for Red Elephants, livestreaming events in Northern California. Disqus wrote:

This past Friday the neo-Nazi propaganda group The Red Elephants announced the expansion of its coverage in the San Francisco Bay area with the addition of Ashton Whitty. She is a student activist at Berkeley who works with the Berkeley College Republicans and the Berkeley Patriot. She has also collaborated with the Leadership Institute’s propaganda group, Campus Reform. She has been given the epithet Patriot Barbie by her neo-Nazi fans.

The Red Elephants typically creates videos catering to fascists and white supremacists, livestreaming from events such as the neo-Nazi rally, Unite the Right in Charlottesville, VA on August 12, as well as the neo-Nazi White Lives Matter rally in Tennessee, and many events in Berkeley. Members have also been seen on streams disseminating white supremacist propaganda such as Holocaust denial. For more information on the connection between white supremacist groups and The Red Elephants, see NoCARA’s previous research here.

Ashton Whitty livestreaming at UC Berkeley for The Red Elephants on September 7, 2017. In this video, Ashton announces she is officially taking over for Rick Write and will be livstreaming from Northern California for RE

Ashton Whitty in BCR shirt with Rick Write of Red Elephants and Colin Duke making a livestream video for the white supremacist channel. Spoiler alert: They never managed to infiltrate any antifa group

Lauren Southern is a far-Right and Alt-Lite activist from Canada. She recently became known for joining the fascist group Generation Identity for their “Defend Europe” media stunt along with Brittany Pettibone from California, who writes for AltRight.com, a website run in part by Richard Spencer.

While onboard the ship, Southern shot flares at a boat containing refugees. Lauren Southern has traveled to Berkeley on multiple occasions to join BCR at various events and also livestream. The students were seen with her during the April 15th rally, and she also came to the university campus for BCR’s Ben Shapiro event and their “Free Speech Week,” and has been seen taking various group photos with members of BCR both during street actions and while on campus tabling.

Lauren Southern with BCR on Sproul Plaza 4/14/17

Lauren Southern with BCR outside Ben Shapiro event

Martin Sellner and Generation Identity

Martin Sellner is a leader of Generation Identity, a fascist and white identitarian group based in Europe, who gained notoriety for being the primary organizer behind the failed “Defend Europe” publicity stunt.

Sellner is from Austria and visited Berkeley during BCR’s “Free Speech Week” where he was seen with Troy Worden, Kyle Chapman, and Lauren Southern, while spending time with girlfriend, Brittany Pettibone. Generation Identity recently started branches in the UK and Ireland, and may be looking to bring their movement to the US, where it has also inspired groups such as Identity Evropa. Worden himself has also written glowingly of Generation Identity, claiming that white Identitarianism is able to succeed whereas neo-Nazi groups in the US generally fail.

Francois Marion and his organization American Freedom Keepers have been at several far-Right events, including in Berkeley and Washington DC. The American Freedom Keepers are described as a militia group, and even attended the neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Because of this, both Marion and his organization are listed among the defendants in a lawsuit from the City of Charlottesville and other plaintiffs due to Marion’s “illegal paramilitary activity” at the Charlottesville, VA rally on August 12th. The group is connected with the Berkeley College Republicans.

For instance, on August 27th, Marion picked up BCR member Ashton Whitty from MLK park in Berkeley during the cancelled “Rally against Marxism.”

Ashton Whitty in the back of Francois Marion’s car after he picked her up from MLK park on August 27, 2017

Nathan Damigo and Identity Evropa

Nathan Damigo is the founder of the fascist and white supremacist organization Identity Evropa. Damigo and his organization were among the primary organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA in August where Heather Heyer was murdered and many more were injured. Before that rally, Damigo and supporters participated in the April 15th rally in Berkeley where Damigo was caught in a viral video punching an antifascist woman in the face. Nathan Damigo has also been linked to BCR repeatedly.

At the April 15th rally, BCR member Jack Palkovic was seen meeting with and shaking Damigo’s hand. Damigo had already been spending time with BCR and developing a relationship with the group as early as January 2017. On January 20th, BCR allowed Damigo to join them at their table on Sproul Plaza to celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump, where they did an interview with him on a conspiracy theory and white supremacist internet show, Red Ice TV.

Nathan Damigo standing to the right of Troy Worden at BCR table Sproul Plaza 1/20/17

Damigo also attended the Milo Yiannopoulos event at UC Davis on January 13th to recruit for Identity Evropa and showed up to UC Berkeley on February 1st to do the same thing until he saw the anarchist black bloc, which made him physically remove himself.

Nathan Damigo and Jack Palkovic of BCR shaking hands at April 15 rally in Berkeley

BCR has attempted to bring Milo Yiannopoulos to UC Berkeley twice in 2017, first on February 1st and again in September for “Free Speech Week.” Both of these events were disastrous failures due to the group’s own organizational contradictions and disorganization compounded by resistance from antifascists.

BCR continues to support Yiannopoulos despite the fact that he is known to have made comments supporting pedophilia and leaked emails show that he worked directly with white supremacists to popularize the Alt-Right while working at Breitbart.

“The grassroots arm of the Republican Party” – College Republican National Committee

As we have just shown, BCR maintains several connections to the Alt-Right and white supremacists, both locally and elsewhere. Some of these connections are directly responsible for violence done in the name of those white supremacist ideologies to which they adhere. This indicates the obvious fact that BCR holds a place in the Alt-Right ecosystem, especially as they connect a neo-fascist street movement to the club’s credibility and connections through the mainstream conservative apparatus, which in turn means the ability to organize events and access to vast amounts of taxpayer money. Guess big government doesn’t suck!

This puts BCR in the position to normalize Alt-Right politics on campus and within the broader conservative constituency, facilitating the process of the fascist creep. Below we point out the institutions backing BCR even as they cater to the Alt-Right and violent fascists behind the scenes.

Naweed Tahmas leading the pledge of allegiance at the California Republican Party Convention

Matt Ronnau (BCR) with Roger Stone, long time Trump operative.

American Freedom Alliance and Geert Wilders

On May 21, BCR members were guests at the American Freedom Alliance’s “2017 Heroes of Conscience Dinner” event. The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported on the American Freedom Alliance’s 2016 and 2017 conferences and their promotion of extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views. Indeed, the keynote speaker at the 2017 dinner was Geert Wilders, pictured with BCR executives Troy Worden and Matt Ronnau. Founder and leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, Wilders gave a speech in which he advocated for an end to immigration from Islamic countries and a ban on mosques. Wilders then ended his speech by saying that if Muslims in the Netherlands “start acting like Sharia law,” they will be “sent packing.” BCR members can be seen clapping throughout in a video of the speech on YouTube.

BCR were guests at hate group American Freedom Alliance’s event

Troy Worden with Geert Wilders at American Freedom Alliance event

Matt Ronnau getting an autograph from Geert Wilders at American Freedom Alliance event

Young America’s Foundation (YAF)

The Young America’s Foundation (YAF) is behind BCR’s Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, and Ben Shapiro events in 2017, though only one of those actually happened as planned. YAF is funded in part by the affiliated organization the Leadership Institute (LI), and both organizations together receive millions from entities such as the DeVos Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, and the F.M. Kirby Foundation. Seems these ‘enemies of globalism,’ are funded by billionaires and have deep ties to the Trump administration and GOP.

In 2015, YAF spent over $8 million to sponsor conservative speaking events on college campuses. However, YAF and LI don’t limit their political engagement solely to paying for college speaking appearances. These organizations have trained conservative activists for decades. Young Republicans that have come from this training have gone on to become prominent GOP politicians, including Vice President Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, and Karl Rove. In short, despite advancing theories that the left is backed by people like Soros, the reality is that groups like BCR are much more in bed with billionaires and segments of the status quo than anyone.

LI also funds Campus Reform, a conservative meets Alt-Lite publication which members of BCR have worked for. Aside from working with the Alt-Right friendly BCR, YAF itself has had its own internal connections to the white nationalist movement. Current YAF board member James B. Taylor also served as the Vice President of the National Policy Institute (NPI) as late as 2007. NPI is a white nationalist think tank currently headed by infamous neo-nazi Richard Spencer. When Taylor was VP, NPI published “The State of White America 2007,” which called Brown v. Board of Education “arguably the worst decision in the Court’s 216-year history,” as noted by Political Research Associates.

As part of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC), BCR functions as part of “the grassroots arm of the Republican Party.” The CRNC trains young Republican students to prepare them to become the future leaders of the conservative movement and sees the activism it offers to members as being a gateway into the Republican party. The CRNC’s website features a resume bank section where members can apply for jobs including working for politicians and think tanks.

Former BCR member Claire Chiara was one of the youngest members of the California delegation at the 2016 Republican National Convention where she supported Trump and she also ran for California State Assembly that same year. At the 2017 California GOP Convention, a far-Right group of College Republicans called Rebuild CCR, led by “Milo Yiannopoulos ally” Ariana Rowlands, won control of the California College Republicans. Troy Worden from UC Berkeley is a part of this group, and now serves as Administrative Vice Chair. In other words, the alt-right hasn’t infiltrated the party, the alt-right is becoming the party.

Rebuild CCR using Trump’s campaign language

UC Berkeley and the City of Berkeley

Both UC Berkeley and the city of Berkeley have spent millions of dollars to protect BCR and their Alt-Right friends as they engage in their political activism and organizing. UC Berkeley has responded to antifascist resistance on their campus by bending over backwards to accommodate BCR in the name of a crisis of free speech.

UC Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ has declared this “the year of free speech” on campus and has waived thousands of dollars in venue fees so BCR could host Ben Shapiro in Zellerbach Hall in September. While the far-Right has cried “free speech” in order to force their hateful views into the national conversation, UC Berkeley has obliged them, citing the campus as the home of the free speech movement. Despite their so-called defense of free speech, the university cancelled a student-led class about Palestine in late 2016 and cancelled a talk by Dr. Anna Tsing on September 25th, organized by the university’s anthropology department, so they could lock down the campus to accommodate BCR’s “Free Speech Week,” despite the fact that the anthropology event was scheduled far in advance of the BCR event.

At the same time, Carol Christ and Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin continue to urge people to stay home and not protest against the far right when they come to antagonize and attack the local community.

But despite a new club president, Troy Worden is still a member of BCR and no other leadership changes have been made. Nor has BCR or its members created distance from the Alt-Right or denounced any of the far-Right and white supremacists discussed above. However, it is clear that internal contradictions and outside pressure are having an effect. This should continue.

BFFs 4ever? Troy Worden and Bradley Devlin

Jack Palkovic is not happy with Bradley Devlin

Additionally, this problem is not unique to UC Berkeley. President of the Washington State University College Republicans, James Allsup, resigned after being identified as a tiki-torch carrying participant in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Despite this, Allsup continues to be a major player within Alt-Right, white nationalist, and neo-Nazi circles, where he has been arguing against some factions of the Alt-Right, that the movement needs abandone street demonstrations and enter into the world of electoral politics and begin to run candidates. On November 30, Allsup was re-elected as president of WSU’s College Republicans, however others within the group claim that this was dismissed on the grounds that Allsup isn’t a student. Regardless, Allsup, like the members of BCR, shows the incredible space and room that the Republican Party will give to openly neo-Nazi, Alt-Right, and white nationalist ideas.

Moreover, white supremacist groups like Identity Evropa will continue to try and recruit on college campuses, while also making inroads into college Republican groups. As the fallout from Unite the Right continues and as the 2018 election race draws closer, a larger segment of the movement will go back towards attempting to engage in entryism, either by following Bannon or trying to pass undetected in the Republican party. Antifascists should continue to research local fascists and their connections, and take strategic action to stop the fascist creep on their college campuses and in their community.